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INSPERITY CHAMPIONSHIPOctober 6, 2011Brad FaxonTHE WOODLANDS, TEXAS PHIL STAMBAUGH: Brad Faxon, I thought I would have you in first trip into Houston as a member of the Champions Tour. You played a few events now, so maybe give us your assessment of the Champions Tour and is it what you thought it would be, and let's talk about my memories of playing here on the PGA TOUR. BRAD FAXON: First of all, I really had no idea how much I would enjoy being out here. My quote that I've used so many times already is this is like getting the 80s on XM Radio, you hit the button and here comes Pat Benatar and Stix and Kansas and you're like, oh, yeah, I used to play with them. I've loved it. People ask, they ask me all the time, what would you do if you didn't play golf? I'm a golfer. I love to play. When I go home and I'm on vacation, I still play golf because I like to play. And seeing these guys and hearing stories, I could listen to it all day. I'm loving it. I don't think I've wiped the smile off my face. I don't think I've played as well as I can play. I don't know if I was expecting the winning scores to be as low as they were or the courses to be as long as they were. I certainly think that because somebody turns 50, they don't get worse overnight, and I get a kick out of the 47-year-old amateur that thinks if he practices hard for three years he's going to be able to beat John Cook and Mark O'Meara. Those guys aren't practicing and getting course. I think this is great. Q. Inaudible. BRAD FAXON: I'm playing with Jim Thorpe and Tim Simpson. Those are guys that I played with in the early 80s. How long ago was that, right? Twenty-five to 28 years ago. It's like starting all over. And it's just -- I've played, this is my sixth event, and second course I've played that I have seen before. So every stop has been new and every place to stay is new. I think some of the difficult things have been like, you don't get a practice round. I get two Pro-Ams. So you're not quite paying as much attention to the golf course as you normally would in a practice round you play with your fellow players. And you know, I thought that coming out here, I would be playing practice rounds with Jay Haas, Jeff Sluman, my buddies. I never see them (chuckling) because you're out playing the Pro-Am. It's not a complaint; it's just a difference. I mean, I played with Tom Kite two days in a row last weekend in Raleigh, and I played tons of golf with Tom Kite. I love playing with Tom Kite. It's just we are not playing on Tuesday like we used to. So these Pro-Ams, the pin placements are always in the front the greens and spots they are not going to be on the weekend. In practice rounds, you're aiming shots over to the back right pin on 18 here or you're chipping from a bunker that you know you might hit it into. So a lot of times, that's one of the difficulties. Q. Inaudible. BRAD FAXON: Tournaments played in -- Q. Is that mind-boggling? BRAD FAXON: It's mind-boggling. You know, the longevity of some of these guys is amazing. He looks, physically, he's in fantastic shape. I've seen him do stuff in the fitness van and people say -- you should watch him coming out of the shower. This guy looks pretty good for 61. That's impressive. He works as hard as ever. I always thought when I first came on TOUR, Curtis was one of the guys, Norman, Peter, and I always tried to play with those guys just so I could learn something. Q. What have you learned -- what has changed -- from the early years? BRAD FAXON: I played poorly for two or three years on the PGA TOUR, and in an ideal world, I would have left the PGA TOUR playing better golf than I did. I wish I could have controlled that better. I have seen my game slowly getting better the last six months and everything is a little bit better, and I haven't shown it yet but I know -- I know it's coming. I can tell. I've shot some better scores because I have not played as well as I would like to yet. But my goals are going to be, win as many tournaments as I can win and play as much as I can. I'm not going to be the guy jumping back and forth between the tours. I don't have the status to do that, No. 1. I haven't won a Major Championship. I don't have -- I can use my Top-25 exemption, Top-50 in money exemption. So I might play a rare tournament here and there but that's not my plan. I'm impressed with guys like Michael Allen and Tom Pernice that they do that, but also, 25 or 26 tournaments out here, still that's the amount of tournaments I normally play in a year. I'm kind of liking the Bernhard Langer mind-set -- Q. (Inaudible.) BRAD FAXON: Pretty good, too. He wouldn't do that on the regular tour. It's a blow to your ego a little bit, too. I still feel like I can compete out there, if I had my game in the right place. But I have a better chance to do it here. Q. Inaudible. BRAD FAXON: Very impressive. Here is a guy that we all know about his back, and he can hit the ball as far as anybody, right. He's one of the longest guys out here. But when you walk by him on the practice tee, his back is so bad that he has to tee balls up in a row so he didn't have to bend over as much. Now that's bad. That's pretty serious. And he's won all over the world for a long time. You rarely see Freddie Couples hit a shot that's off the clubface. His shots are always solid. He doesn't really spin the ball way off-line. I mean, he's a talented guy. Doesn't look like he practices much. Q. Inaudible. BRAD FAXON: Yeah, and I've seen it go the other way with some guys, too, that look like they are in great shape and their golf game goes off. It doesn't make sense really. Someone might have -- I would much rather have a golf game that is in great shape than physically be in great shape. Then there's Lee Patterson; we are talking about specimens. (Laughter). Q. Inaudible. BRAD FAXON: Right, I've been to the TPC course there. It is. And I'm battling and toying with the idea of flying home Sunday night for two days and coming out, but Rhode Island, it's not easy to get there from here or get back from there. So I'm on a three-and-a-half-week away from home trip. You know, a lot of it would depend on how am I playing on Sunday; can I get a flight and I hope I can; plus the idea of going to San Antonio early and playing an actual practice round. Kite has already asked me to play. I would love to go to Austin and just hang out in Austin because I've never spent any time there, play a course or two there, because I know there's a few. Q. Might be an equalizer -- BRAD FAXON: This is the first time anybody has played this course in a tournament, right? It was Oak Hill last year? I saw Tommy Lamb, who caddies for Jay Haas, yesterday and he's trying to convince Jay not to go home and not to come back Wednesday and play one practice round in the Pro-Am. He played there last year, and it was a tough course, especially when the wind is blowing and you miss fairways and the ball is gone. I watched Adam Scott playing the Norman course -- that was impossible -- I don't want to go there. Kevin Na made a 20 -- Q. A 16? BRAD FAXON: Did he win when he shot that there? Q. I don't think so. The long putters -- BRAD FAXON: Yeah. I ordered one. I talked a lot about long putters with different people and up until recently, the long putter would have been something that you did out of desperation, right. Nobody started with the long putter because that was the better way to putt. Everybody went to them because they had failed at conventional or cross-handed or whatever other style or grip you would have used. You know, today's kids, seeing Adam Scott use one or Keegan Bradley or Webb Simpson, and now it's an alternative to the regular putter. If you're asking me what do I think of them, should they be legal, I think absolutely not. To me, it's not even something that should have been considered. I wish we were governing by rules that the PGA TOUR could make it illegal, which I think the USGA should probably still make the rules but they probably have guys on their committee who are putting lousy and are using the long putter -- see that happening before. But I also remember when I was a kid we used to take shafts of club, and put it into our belly -- and take a full swing (demonstrating). I think it's ideal. Asked him how many times -- (inaudible) -- when I was hunting I got back, I had 35 messages and I said, well, what did you do? He said, well, I went and bought one. And I said, did you? That's not really the way you should be teaching. He teaches left-hand forward and de lost the club and push -- pull with your left hand. That's very different. So it's amazing to talk -- we are not going to be able to change it. They are not going to do that now. It's too late. Q. So you bought one? BRAD FAXON: I didn't buy one. I ordered one. I called the guy that works for Scotty, Paul Vizanko, he's probably watching mini-tour players putt on video, as anybody in the world, I would say it's probably the world but he's probably seen more stuff on video. The Scotty Cameron studio, they have a patent on the speed camera, it's the highest speed camera in history. It's amazing to watch. And he says a lot of guys use the belly putter and their stroke is good; it really helps them. Q. You're a purist -- BRAD FAXON: I'm kind of a purist. I would never say I would never do it, but I'd have to try a lot of different ones, because I picked that one up -- I don't think the belly putter, sticking it right in the belly, I think it's a little left of center ball is forward left of center most of the time, so it's not really -- Q. Maybe if you tried it -- BRAD FAXON: I have a putting green in my basement. I've walked by guys putting with it -- but if I got to the point where I was missing short putts I would try. I have a friend of mine, his son is going to Ferman, and as a senior, he developed the yips two years ago, and he switched to putting lefty, and as soon as he saw Keegan Bradley and Webb Simpson, he switched to a long putter, an Adam Scott-style Scotty Cameron and he just won a college tournament. I have a huge belief that these kids of today are going to see that and now instead of being pointed at, people are going to go over and say, wow, and I believe it's kind of like the two-handed backhand in tennis 25 years ago. It was the odd guy that hit a two-handed backhand. You see everybody else had the one-handed back hand and now if you don't have a two-handed backhand you can barely compete unless you're Roger Federer. Now I think the belly putter is going to be like the two-handed backhand. It's going to become accepted and you'll see more people use it. Q. So many people look at it as an advantage, why not start putting that way. Did you know Keegan at all? BRAD FAXON: No, I would have never known him. I know him now. And he's a really nice kid. But I didn't know him. He grew up in Vermont. That's kind of far. Q. I know it is, but I didn't know if -- BRAD FAXON: And he's so much younger. I would never have competed against him. Q. As funny as it is, that it sort of takes the artistry out of it -- BRAD FAXON: Is that why I don't like it? No, I don't think it's the artistry. It's not an inherent part of the game to let something touch your body, I don't get that, why they would allow that -- you can't anchor it between your legs but you can anchor it against your body -- I've tried to putt between my legs and that's not easy. My belief in putting, you talked about Loren Roberts and Ben Crenshaw, two of the greatest putters that ever played and they have very different looking putting strokes. You think about the greatest players in the world, they were all great putters at some point in their career, Jack, Seve Ballesteros, Tom Watson, Tiger and their styles are very different. So what is a fundamental? If you said what's a fundamental of putting or the golf swing, fundamentals to me are something that most of the great players do. You could argue what your definition of fundamental is but to me fundamental is what most of the great players do. Would you agree with that? So in putting there are not a lot of fundamentals because grip, if you say grip is a fundamental, well, it isn't, really. So is posture a fundamental? If you heard about that in golf swing stuff, well, alignment, grip, posture, take away, those are all fundamentals. Well, are they really? And in putting are they really fundamentals what are the fundamentals. People say, why don't you write a book on putting? My book would be one page and there would be no fundamentals in the world because there aren't any. The one fundamental would be the best players in the world are confident. What's the second? Feel. Would you have to have feel but everybody's feel is different. Even describing feel. The hardest thing to do is to teach putting, because it's like, how far do you throw a ball. And what you see and what I see can be totally different but they are both correct. Do you see right edge or a spot you want to roll the ball over or do you see a line or what do you see. As long as you see something with the ball going in the hole, I think that's what you want to do. But I'm not a big believer that you even have to putt the ball a proper speed. Dave Pelz -- inaudible -- I told him, every putt I hit 17 inches by the hole and I missed and he gets all mad at me. I said, what if I don't feel like hitting it that hard. What if I want to just go in the hole. And you talk to Dave Stockton and Ben Crenshaw, they love to go in soft and then you watch Tiger Woods and Tom Watson in their prime, they hammered it to the hole. So even that, that's not a fundamental. It's the hardest thing to teach. But I also feel like I can look at a player and tell what looks good and what looks bad, too. Q. (Inaudible.) BRAD FAXON: No, people ask me the question I get, what's the one thing, give me one tip, I said, I can give you one tip but I can't give you one tip without watching and talking to you and I could help you a lot more sitting down and talking to you for 20 minutes than ever getting me on the putting green and watching your swing. No matter how good or bad you are with the putter, you can always think better and think differently if you're struggling. Even it's more important, the worse you put -- people say, oh, he's so bad. It doesn't do any good to have a good attitude. I think for me putting, when people say -- I tried to practice for years and years and years and hours and hours and hours to become a great putter. And on the PGA TOUR where it's harder to separate yourself from average, you know what I mean, it's harder to do. It's harder to separate yourself. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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